The lake is as big as 38,000 dry swimming pools due to drought

Lake Peñuelas was once the main source of water for the Chilean city of Valparaiso. Two decades ago, the lake was the size of 38,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, but now there's only enough water left to fill two.

New drone footage shows a vast expanse of parched, cracked land that was once the bottom of a lake, littered with fish skeletons and animals desperately searching for food. and drinking water.

"Essentially, what we have is just a puddle of muddy water and it's completely unusable," Jose Luis Murillo, general manager of ESVAL, which supplies water to Valparaiso, told Reuters.

Lake Peñuelas needs steady and heavy rainfall in winter, as it did more than 13 years ago, but is at an all-time low.

Higher air temperatures due to global warming also make the snow in the Andes unable to compact, leading to faster melting or direct conversion to vapor, significantly reducing the amount of water entering Lake Peñuelas.

Chile's Lake Peñuelas is in danger of disappearing due to climate change.

In addition, rising global sea temperatures are preventing storms in coastal Chile, an important weather phenomenon that contributes to ice formation in the Andes.

Behind these problems, studies have identified a global shift in climate patterns.

"The water situation in Chile is very dire because today we are seeing impacts that were predicted 20 - 30 years ago related to reduced rainfall and increased droughts, affecting the production systems", emphasized Alex Godoy-Faúndez, Director of the Center for Sustainability Research at the University of Development of Chile.

"If it doesn't rain this year, we will have nothing left to do, no other way because the animals are getting weaker and dying day by day," said Segundo Aballay, a cattle herder in the village of Montenegro. more.

Unfortunately for agriculturists like Aballay, researchers at the University of Chile predict the country will have 30% less water in the next 30 years, based on mathematical models and historical data.